Accidental oil spills frequently occur in navigable bodies of water. Such oil spills often kill a substantial quantity of both land and marine life as the water is polluted and beaches are covered with the resulting oil slick. The resulting environmental damage tends to be devastating in scope and long lasting in duration.
Oil spills typically occur as the result of either a rupture in an underwater pipeline or on an offshore oil rig or as a consequence of a catastrophic occurrence upon an oil transporting vessel. Ocean currents and winds may carry the oil spill for great distances, occasionally exceeding 1000 miles, where it is ultimately washed upon a beach.
Water vessels such as tankers and barges provide cost effective means for transporting industrial quantities of bulk chemicals such as oil for great distances, commonly across oceans. Such vessels commonly transport quantities of oil on the order of millions of gallons. Thus, the potential devastation caused by the inadvertent release of such chemicals from the transport vehicle is well recognized. Money damages can easily run into billions of dollars. The injury to wild life and the environment is potentially irreparable.
Such oil spills spread quickly, moved by the wind and ocean currents. They therefore must be contained rapidly, before reaching a size which makes containment impossible. Contemporary practice is to contain the oil slick by surrounding it with a floating barrier, commonly known as an oil boom. After the oil boom has contained the oil slick, various means may be utilized to disperse, destroy, or collect the oil. Various chemicals may be utilized to cause the oil to break up, dissolve, and/or sink to the bottom of the water. The use of such chemicals for making the oil miscible in water thus appears to alleviate the oil spill. However, the oil is merely spread throughout the water such that it may eventually cause even greater environmental damage. The oil may additionally be set on fire or treated with microbial agents to diminish its quantity. However, the preferable course of action is to collect the oil, thereby removing it from the sea.
Contemporary oil booms comprise little more than a plurality of partitions or fence like sections which float upon the surface of the water and extend a short distance below the surface in an attempt to contain the oil spill within a defined area.
Unfortunately, contemporary oil spill containment and recovery systems are slow to deploy, comparatively ineffective at containing the oil spill, relatively labor intensive in their deployment and operation, and relatively inefficient and expensive to operate. Thus, contemporary oil containment and recovery systems suffer from substantial deficiencies which detract from their overall effectiveness and desirability. As such, it is desirable to provide a means for containing and storing oil spills which may be rapidly transported to the spill sight, quickly set up, and efficiently operated.